Towards Synchronized Privacy-Preserving Authentication for MDTEN-Driven VANETs

Digital Twin (DT) technology, by performing simulation, analysis, and prediction over the data mapped to digital space, can create a digital replica of the physical object. It can be combined with edge computing or cloud computing to provide broad vehicle-to-everything applications and improve the service quality of vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs). In this article, DT technology and mobile edge computing are integrated into VANETs to introduce a framework of mobile digital twin edge network-driven VANETs (MDTEN-Driven VANETs). Moreover, facing the security and privacy challenges in the framework, we propose a synchronized privacy-preserving authentication (SPPA) scheme. In SPPA, we first design a synchronized anonymous certificateless aggregate signature (SA-CLAS) to achieve the authentication with time state synchronization and the privacy preservation of the real identity. Furthermore, to deal with malicious vehicles, we adopt blockchain technology and devise a smart contract algorithm to manage the public information of vehicles. The security analysis demonstrates that SA-CLAS is existentially unforgeable under adaptive chosen message attacks, and SPPA can satisfy the necessary security requirements. The performance evaluation shows the efficiency and practicality of SA-CLAS and SPPA. Besides, the designed smart contract is implemented in an Ethereum test network, which presents an acceptable blockchain consumption.